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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 4505903" data-attributes="member: 3192">None of which changes the fact that the system is storytelling and not role-playing.  For instance, my character says "To impress the king my PC goes to a specialty bakery store in the city run by elves from the Golden Forest.  He studies for six months watching how they make the tastiest foods.  Then he spends everything he has on purchasing a chef's kitchen and the supplies to bake a ...." ...on and on until he makes a Diplomacy check (or whatever check the DM says applies) to add +1 success or failure to the Skill Challenge total.  As I said before, this is storytelling, not role-playing.  The player succeeds because of his ability to tell a story, not perform an act.  The entirety of the story above could be totally improvised with no relation to the actual gameworld.Lets move on from this.  It would seem storytelling challenges are just as undesirable to such a player as a role-playing challenge.I'm not sure why, but you seem to be misreading me here again.  Something imagined, fictive or not, is not a story.  The imagined thing is what the players are interacting with.I think we've come to a cruxes of the issue.  While the player is using narrative language to relate his PC swinging a sword, what is actually going on is the player is directing the GM to have his character swing his carried sword.  As much as the player has a visualized idea of what is happening in the play world within his own mind, it isn't that play world that is the actuality.  It's the one in the DM's head.  That's the imaginary space where the reality is happening (the true ideas exist).  To a storyteller it may seem like a player could make up whatever reality they so wished, but to a role-player (playing in an imagined placed) the external reality isn't possible for them to change.  They can only change it through the playing of a role.  Any other way and it becomes the playing of something else.  As you may recall I called this "God play".  Where several Olympian Gods play a game to hash out what happens and the PCs are fated to follow out their commands (without a free will of their own).As clarify what I just said above, there is no first telling.  It is a doing.  And just as I, putting on my shoes in the morning or taking the dog for a walk, am not "telling a story", neither is anyone role-playing.  I will admit a role-player could "act" while they are role-playing.  And that that acting could tell a story through portrayal, the story of the character's personality.  But that's really stretching it to include the game as a storytelling game.  And role-players certainly don't have to act to play an RPG.  Just as most every role-player doesn't act when role-playing non-hobby RPGs.I wasn't trying to be contentious here, only wondering if you remembered the page number for my own reading. Thanks for that.  And for recounting what they wrote about.My own definition of role-playing is the one in the dictionaries.  It's the one different from acting (theatre acting specifically).  And none of which qualify as storytelling unless you equate storytelling with existing.Like you've said before, we've already had this discussion.  I don't believe a DM/Referee ever gets to tell a story.  He merely relates back to those playing what is happening in the world.  (I'll get back to that point in a second).  As we've gone over before, the referee isn't a tyrant who makes can just say what goes.  If that were the case, RPGs would never have had rules in the first place.  You point to an example where a referee needs to make a judgment call that lies outside of the rules.  That judgment call extrapolates from what the world actually is the rules are modeling.  And it carries over to the future when such a situation comes up again.  In the specific example you cite it would seem there is no clear designation of where the PC hit.  Honestly?  The Referee could say "it doesn't matter" and play could continue without concern.  But what happens if it does matter?  When it does matter is the only time rules are needed.  Personally, I feel a Player asking is what changes the focus of the game and makes things matter, so this is important to me.  In this case the DM (or the whole group if they wish to participate) makes a new house rule that unbiasedly determines where hits landed on a body.  If greater detailed healing is also desired by the group because of this, more house rules can be made.  The rules are there to remove the Referees "just saying what happens" from the game.  It's true, simulations are imperfect, but thankfully ideas exist beyond such limitations.  And can allow one to model what they know is real.You might question this and say "but isn't he creating the world at some point even if he is using the player's input?"  For instance, what kind of healing does an elf need if his body is pierced?  Who gets to say what it is?  In my view, making up world content isn't telling a story.  It would be like saying the person who made up a boardgame or the rules of a sport was telling a story and every time house rules or rule changes were made to those the story told under them was being changed.  Coming back to why a referee relating back to the player what is happening in the world isn't a story.  The relation is certainly using narrative speech, but it just isn't fictional narrative.  Just as you said Monopoly isn't a storytelling game, playing Monopoly with a group of blind people doesn't turn it into a "collaborative storytelling game" (or whatever they're calling RPGs currently).  Having to tell blind players what they rolled, where there pieced moved to, having them relate to you what they do - buy, pay, pick a card, etc. - none of this is collaborative storytelling.  Even though it occasionally uses narrative discourse, it isn't what grammarians term "fictional narrative".  To say otherwise would be like saying nearly every boardgame (or cardgame, etc.) is a storytelling game when played with the blind, but not with those who can see.  It doesn't make sense because the ideas "played with" are actual.  In boardgames the ideas are represented on a board, on cards, with dice.  In an RPG they are represented with maps, numerical descriptors, dice, and plenty more. If a DM could just say what happened in the world, all of this stuff would be totally unnecessary.  As it's what actually models a reality vs. telling a story, it makes success in that world real.  Real in the same way as telling a Monopoly winner or a Magic: the Gathering winner that they tell a good story may be taken as an insult.  A RPG player doesn't win or lose because it is narratively interesting.  They win or lose because they actually win or lose in the modeled world.  That's why role-playing is used in educational environments to teach behavior the world round and storytelling isn't.  It's a completely different kind of satisfaction from telling a good story.</blockquote>

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